About the Author

Friday, March 24, 2017

Update on my Writing

Everything is going well
with Flux. I’m still so overjoyed that this is happening! So far we’ve done two
rounds of thorough editing and I have a cover too! Can’t wait to share it.

I didn’t have it this
easy. I want to remind everyone that this book took years to get published.
This is my fifth book, my third YA book. I went through years and years of
rejection. Not going to say exactly how many, but enough to make you go
bonkers!

But the reason I pushed
this book so hard was because I always believed in it. Plus I received a lot of
praise during those rejections. I came so close so many times, but it just
wouldn’t work out. But deep in my mind, I thought to myself, if I give up on
this book, I’m giving up on the rest too. I have four other YA novels that I
wrote after this too, and I plan to push those out there in the world
eventually.

I did this on my own too,
without an agent. There were quite a few publishers interested, but asking for
a lot of revisions. Same thing with agents too. I revised this particular story
seven different times and it still didn’t work! That’s when I knew to stick to
my guns and stop revising for everyone and to just keep pushing it out there.

I submitted to Flux
November of last year. The editor asked for the full on the first three
chapters, the synopsis and the query of course too. She requested around New
Year’s. I sent it to her and she confirmed getting it on New Year’s Eve! How
cool was that?

I got her email just days
later, on a Wednesday. I saw the email in my inbox and freaked out. I thought
if they don’t like it, I’m retiring this thing. Seriously! I felt like I’ve exhausted
all places. And Flux only took agented submissions and suddenly one day when I
was searching on Google again, I found out they were starting to take
submissions from authors directly. So I reread and cleaned it up for the umpteenth
time and sent it. A door had opened for me.

But the point I am trying
to make is, never give up. Always keep trying, keep sending, keep looking for
places and agents to send. I want to stress to look for agents first and if
that’s not going how you planned, you can always submit directly to publishers.
There are still a lot of great publishers out there, that pay advances and take
direct submissions. The key is to search, and to keep searching.

Also another thing that
kept me busy was keeping up with the YA market. I would read just about every
new blurb of a book possible. And reading YA novels too. Study what is on the
market. I’m not saying write to trend, but get a feel of what’s out there and
what’s moving.

I still have a long way to
go myself. But to all my writing friends struggling with finding an agent and
or publisher, persistence is about 97% of what you need. For reputable places
to submit your YA novel to, that also pay advances, please peruse my blog of
lists of publishers. And good luck to you and keep going!